A Marine Corps drillmaster inspects a platoon of recruits at the Parris Island training facility in Beaufort County. Three civilian workers at the facility plead guilty in a $1.5 million conspiracy to steal razors and razor blades. File/Cpl. Vanessa Austin/Marine Corps/Provided

A Marine Corps drillmaster inspects a platoon of recruits at the Parris Island training facility in Beaufort County. Three civilian workers at the facility plead guilty in a $1.5 million conspiracy to steal razors and razor blades. File/Cpl. Vanessa Austin/Marine Corps/Provided

Beaufort residents Orlando Byson, 35, Tommie Harrison Jr., 27, and Sarah Brutus, 36, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The three told U.S. District Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks in Charleston they schemed with a noncommissioned Marine Corps officer to sell the razors and razor blades to out-of-state third parties.

All three, who are out on bail, were indicted in October and will be sentenced at a later date.

Each faces up to five years in prison, $250,000 in fines and three years of supervised release, said Rhett DeHart, assistant U.S. attorney.

Initially, Byson and Harrison each faced a felony count of theft of government property, but the charge is expected to be dropped as part of the plea agreement upon sentencing, DeHart said.

Meanwhile, the officer involved, 1st Sgt. Lascelles Chambers — a Marine for the past two decades — is being prosecuted by military authorities at Parris Island.

He is expected to be tried in April, federal prosecutors said, adding that Chambers received the bulk of the proceeds from the scheme.

First Sgt. Lascelles Chambers of the Marine Corps was stationed at the Parris Island boot camp facility in South Carolina from August 2016 to March 2018. File/Marine Corps/Provided

Every week, Harrison and Byson — careful to avoid store surveillance cameras — would lift razors from the store and deliver the items to Chambers in person.

When Chambers was transferred to a new post at the 4th Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company in West Palm Beach, Fla., they would send him packages in the mail, authorities said.

At that point, Chambers would sell the items in other states. The operation started in January 2017 and lasted through June 2018, prosecutors said.

The operation, based out of the Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot, was one that offered the possibility of a fruitful payday for the confessed conspirators since razor blades cost more than $2 each.

Annually, some 17,000 recruits come through the depot for boot camp.

"This is one of the largest theft of government property cases in the history of the district," DeHart told the judge.

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Get the best of The Post and Courier, handpicked and delivered to your inbox every morning.

Email

Reach Michael Majchrowicz at 843-937-5591. Follow him on Twitter @mjmajchrowicz.

Michael Majchrowicz is a reporter covering crime and public safety. He previously wrote about courts for the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts. A Hoosier native, he graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism.

We’ve temporarily removed comments from articles while we work on a new and better commenting experience. In the meantime, subscribers are encouraged to join the conversation at our Post and Courier Subscribers group on Facebook.